Champions Trophy 2025: Gill-ing them softly with his song

Dubai: Oh, what it must be like to be Shubman Gill these days. To turn up and score runs for fun, while having fun. To watch the ball go exactly where he commands it to, with a twirl of the blade and a flick of the wrists, with power and precision, with grace and elegance. To whip off the helmet and bow to the audience, a beaming smile suitably reflecting the inner joy and delight, on keeping his tryst with three figures.

It wasn’t always so, you know. It wasn’t so even a month back, when the classy 25-year-old was wondering where his next run would come from.

Like most other top-order batters with the honourable exception of Yashasvi Jaiswal and, to a lesser extent KL Rahul, Gill had to tour to forget of Australia over the winter. Three Tests and five innings translated to a measly 93 runs, adding to the pile of unfulfilled five-day potential outside Asia. Gill had work to do if he was to cement his No. 3 position in the Test team, occupied with glorious distinction in the immediate past by Cheteshwar Pujara and by the legendary Rahul Dravid before him.

But he could worry about that later. The immediate priority was to put on his white-ball face, with a little bit of help from the red-ball format.

Within a fortnight of arriving from Australia, Gill arrived in Bengaluru to lead Punjab in their Ranji Trophy faceoff against Karnataka. It was part out of desire to get some runs, confidence and momentum under his belt, part out of the edict laid down by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which required internationals to play domestic cricket when not on national duty. Gill could have fronted up just as a player, but captaincy, he says, helps him remain involved in the game constantly.

After a first-innings failure, the fluent Gill surfaced once the Chinnaswamy strip eased up considerably. Punjab were staring an innings defeat in the face and Gill’s 102 was unable to prevent that eventuality, but during his 14th first-class century, there were signs that he was turning the corner. Or, at the very least, reverting to type on home patch, priming himself for the three ODIs against England that would segue into the Champions Trophy.

Even during his overseas Test travails, Gill has been an exceptional white-ball exponent, and more so in the 50-over game. Alongside Rohit Sharma, he has struck up a truly prolific tandem of opposites. Rohit charges and metaphorically snarls, taking down bowlers with raw power – a recent introduction to an otherwise mellifluous stroke-making force – while Gill kills ’em softly, with a stylish nick here, a gentle cut there. Where Rohit wields the bludgeon, Gill has embraced the rapier, both with the same dramatic import that has produced six hundred and 12 half-century alliances in 28 ODIs as an opening pair.

Having built on the Ranji century with 80, 67 and 112 against England, which catapulted him back to the top of the ICC rankings for ODI batters, Gill was confronted with a whole new challenge at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Thursday night. Jos Buttler’s men had been subjugated on batting beauties, but Bangladesh needed to be tamed on a slowing, sluggish, demanding track. Rohit had set the tempo in the chase of 229 with a 36-ball 41 but Gill’s brief was different – bat through the innings, forget the new mantra of all-out attack, secure the two points. His pre-eminence was magnified when India lost Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and Axar Patel in the space of 32 runs, which left them needing 85 more for victory.

Gill the manipulator – of fields, of bowlers, of opposition thinking – stepped up and got the job done. With subliminal ease. Century No. 8, victory by six wickets with KL Rahul for support. Now, that’s how the top dog does it, right?